Build me up, buttercup. Or don't.

The children get nervous when they are left alone with me in the house for too long, fearing they will starve to death. So I decide to cook dinner and free up their little brains to worry about other things, like scary monsters or bad men or polyester shirts.

I squirt olive oil on a slab of raw salmon and squeeze some lemon juice on top and slide the whole slimy mess into a Pyrex baking dish. I have no idea if one is actually supposed to put olive oil on a fish, but it makes it nice and shiny and the lemon seeds get stuck in the oil in a decorative pattern.

I am so busy being proud of myself for preheating the oven to the completely random temperature of 364 degrees F, that I almost forget to make something else to put on their plates with the salmon. I check the vegetable drawer, a drawer I have not visited since we arrived home from the Land of Unforgettable Spa Treatments, because no one eats vegetables around here anymore.

A family of potatoes to sacrifice! Yes! Potatoes! I am dimly aware that there are things you can do with potatoes, processes that make them edible. I think hard. A tiny lightbulb appears over my head, then shatters into smithereens as the children run for cover.

I peel my potatoes. They slip out of my hands and into the stainless-steel sink, over and over. I try hard not to think about the dirty mop water and the old food sediment that have spent time in this sink. Peel. Slip. Boom. Peel. Slip. Boom.

"How am I supposed to do this? This is hard," I say. I just need Daisy Dukes and a maltese in a Louis Vuitton case.

Christopher turns his face to the teapot and they share a smirk together.

"I know what you're thinking," I say. "You're thinking people have been peeling potatoes since the beginning of civilization and I should be able to manage this with a potato peeler, standing in a well-lit kitchen. I am not squatting in front of a dying fire and hurling rocks at mastodons. I know. But it is still VERY HARD to peel potatoes."

Christopher hides under the tea cozy with the teapot. I can hear them giggling together.
I get the potatoes and two fingers peeled. I watch the potatoes on the cutting board. Nothing is happening. I don't know why.

"What do I do with potatoes?" I ask.

"It depends," he says. "What do you want to do with the potatoes?"

"I want to be able to eat them," I say. Another little light bulb. This one lasts a little longer before it explodes, sprinkling imaginary

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